Chapter V
That the Father teacheth us to know Christ as the great object of our faith.
That he. instructs us that eternal life is to be found and obtained only in
Christ his Son. That he teacheth us to seek this life only in him. That
he teacheth us to look to the person of Christ, and to seek and desire an
interest in himself, as well as salvation by liim. How God the Father
teacheth us to know Christ his Son, and what are the effects which his
instructions have upon us.
I come to the other part of my subject. As I told you it was the Father
drew you to Christ, so the other part of the subject is this, That the Father
CHAP. V.] OF JUSTIFYING FAITH. 150
teacheth us to know Christ, as the matter of his teaching, and instructs us
in what concerns him that may woo us, and teach us to come to Christ. As he draws us, so he useth variety of cords, or motives, or persuasions, to
draw.
I shall first shew what it is materially that the Father teacheth us, and
then I shall shew you the manner how he teacheth. It were infinite to run
over all the particulars concerning Christ that the Father teacheth. There
is a great variety herein, and something takes hold on one man s heart, and
something on another, as they are scattered up and down. All the doc
trines which Christ delivered, that we read of in the gospel of John, and
which persuade to come to himself, are all of them the words of the Father. The word which you hear is not mine, but the Father s which sent me, John xiv. 24. And those words doth the Father himself speak inwardly
to the soul of a man. It is a large field, to shew you what he teacheth
concerning his Son Christ. I think it therefore the best way to give you what is said in one scripture, which expressly sets down what is the
Father s record : 1 John v. 11, 12, This is the record, that God hath
given us eternal life ; and this life is in his Son. He that hath the Son
hath life : and he that hath not the Son of God hath not life. This is the
great record of God the Father concerning his Son ; and he that believes
not the record God gives of his Son, makes God a liar. Here is the great doctrinal record summed up to you, and it is short and brief. But you may ask me, Was this record given to draw men to believe ? Is it so intended ?
I answer, that though it intends assurance, yet it intends also the matter which God hath recorded to cause faith, and to bring men on to believe.
This is plain from ver. 13, These things have I written to you that
believe on the name of the Son of God, that ye may know that ye have
eternal life, and that ye may believe on the name of the Son of God. There is assurance : but suppose you want assurance, yet there is what may draw you to believe, that you may believe on the name of his Son.
It is to bring men on to believe ; and therefore in the words before he
saith, He that believes not makes God a liar, because he believeth not
the record God gave of his Son. That which causeth them that believe
further to believe, causeth one that doth not believe to come in to believe.
It is not designed for them that have assurance. How is that proved ? Because the apostle saith, He that hath not the Son hath not life ; and
therefore what he speaks is to draw men on to believe. Let us see what
things they are God hath recorded of his Son for to believe concerning him, that we who do believe may believe further.
1. The first record is, that * the Father hath given us eternal life. By us here is not meant only us that believe already, but it is as well intended
to induce others to believe. He hath given us, i.e., us men; he hath
given amongst us (give me leave to express it) eternal life. As if a man
goes to a college, they of the college tell him such a founder hath given us such a fellowship or exhibition, though every one is not capable of that
fellowship or exhibition, but yet it is given to the college, and they all can
say, it is given to us, i. e., to that body amongst us for such uses. Thus
to give is taken plainly, John vi. 32, My Father giveth you the true bread from heaven. He speaks to them that never did believe; yet, saith
he, my Father gives to you eternal life ; to you the sons of men, that grace, that mercy is given before the world began, 2 Tim. i. 9. It is made known to all the sons of men to whom the gospel is preached, as that which is given amongst them ; and there are those among them which
160 OF THE OBJECT AND ACTS [BOOK II.
hear this grace of the gospel to whom it shall be given effectually, and therefore it may well be indefinitely expressed, that God intends eternal
life to the sons of men. This is a great thing in the heart of God, which God the Father doth reveal to a poor soul, that his whole purpose, inten
tion, and resolution, which he will never be frustrated of, is to give eternal
life unto the sons of men. This is his heart, his whole heart, and thus much of his heart he doth reveal of himself, that his purpose is in and through Jesus Christ to give eternal life, John. iii. 16. He hath given eternal life with the most serious purposes and unchangeable resolutions to the sons of men. Though he doth not tell you the names of the
persons, and so declare who they are, yet he declares that he gives it to them that believe ; therefore, you that hear it, believe and come in.
2. He says, I have given eternal life, but how must you have it ? This
life is conveyed to men in my Son (saith God), and by my Son, and there
is no means else whereby you may have eternal life. Jesus Christ is the common receptacle of life eternal, for God hath made Jesus Christ his Son to be the fountain of life, to be the bread of God that should give life to the world : John vi. 33, I am the bread of life, that came down from heaven, and giveth life unto the world. This life is only to be had in his Son ; and if you will have life you must go to him, for it is in him. God the Father did never vocally preach the gospel in the New Testament but once or twice, and then he spake from heaven himself, and not his
Spirit ; and what said he ? Mat. xvii. 5, This is my beloved Son, hear him, i. e. 9 take him, receive him, go to him. Well, though God doth not speak vocally now with an outward voice, but secretly in the souls of poor sinners, yet he says, This life is in my Son, there I have laid it ; you cannot have it from me, but him ; he gives his flesh for the life of the world, and there is not anything else in heaven or earth will give you life ; nay, I can give you life no other way (i. e., according to his own appoint ment in the New Testament), but by having my Son. The soul sees it is not having grace, as humiliation, contrition, but it must have the Son if it have life. I have sometimes thought that if I had the life of grace in me, I had the Son ; but it is contrary here, you must have the Son if you have
life. You must not go to God for the righteousness of Christ only, and not go to the Son himself. You must do more, you must go to Christ for life : This life is in my Son, says God. You must not go to God for Christ s sake only, but you must go to Christ. I do not say that you have no
grace else, for you may have gone to him for his Son s righteouness, and for his favour ; but yet you must take his person in too : John vi. 53, Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of man, and drink his blood, ye have no life in you. The Father causeth souls to see a necessity of coming to his Son at last. If you could suppose you could give your body to be burnt, and had all faith, and knew all mysteries, all would be in vain ; if you have not the Son you have not Kfe :
* Except you eat my flesh, says Christ, you have no life in you. The Father puts souls upon a necessity of going to Christ.
3. I observe, that the Father doth allow in his record that a man should out of love to himself seek life in Christ and salvation in Christ. He allows thee to go to him to be saved, for it is what God bids thee do, and prompts thee to it. His record doth declare it to thee ; nay, it is the first
thing he mentions ; for before he tells you life is in my Son, he tells you, eternal life is given amongst you, and bids you seek it. The aim of going to Christ for salvation is an allowed aim by God the Father in the record
ClIAP. V.] OF JUSTIFYING FAITH. 161
concerning his Son ; nay, he threatens you, that you shall not have life if you do not go to him : You will not come to me, says Christ to the Pharisees, that ye might have life, John v. 40. Every soul that comes to Jesus Christ comes at first for life : We believed in Jesus Christ, says the apostle, Gal. ii. 16, that we might be justified ; it was a self-aim in them, you will not come to me to be saved ; this the Father sets on in a conviction to the heart, and he puts men on a necessity to come to Christ, and
^ allows self-love in coming. The argument is invincible, God in
ordaining your salvation did ordain it chiefly for his own glory, and yet he had infinite love to you. And doth this love of God to you stand with God s glory ?,
J Then certainly your aiming out of self-love at your own salva tion stands with the glory of God in saving of you, and this is in order to
believing. But withal he tells men this, This life is in my Son. If you ask, Where doth it lie ? It lies in my Son (says God), and in having him you have life, for eternal life lies not in anything out of the Son of God ; no, it lies in himself. Therefore there is no danger in any man s seeking Jesus Christ for his own salvation, for he seeks it in Christ himself ; for
if thou seekest happiness in the Son of God, and life in him, thou mayest make self-love thy aim as much as thou wilt, he is your life, Col. iii. 2, 3, and Christ lives in you, Gal. ii. 20. People desire heaven; do you know what heaven is ? It is to live in God and with God for ever, and you place in God glorified above yourselves that happiness you seek.
4. He puts you upon seeking his Son, and puts you on coming for his Son, as that which above all concerns yourselves. How is that proved ? He that hath the Son, saith he. It is a powerful phrase, it is a marriage phrase^ To have him, to enjoy his person (says a poor virgin that truly loves him), is more than all. I desire to have him to save me, to have him that I may have eternal life, but I principally desire to have himself. This is the record which God the Father gives concerning his Son, to draw men on to believe.
5. God the Father directs us to seek to have Christ as the Son of God, as well as [as] a Saviour. He that hath the Son, saith he,
< hath life ; we must then come to him as the Son, and give up ourselves to him as the Son, as well as regard him as the author of life and means of salvation to us : it is not having the Redeemer only, but it is having the Son ; as he lives by the Father, so we live by him ; and as Christ says, My Father is mine, and I am his, so the soul comes to be Christ s, and Christ becomes its salvation and life. Observe what the apostle says, Gal. ii. 20, The life I lead in the flesh it is by faith, of two things, or of Christ considered in two notions, as Son of God, and as Redeemer, who loved me, and gave himself for me. If you rightly examine the story of the disciples believing in Christ, recorded in the 1st, 2d, and 3d chapters of John, you will find that sometimes they say, they had found the Saviour of the world, sometimes they would say they had found the Son of God, and sometimes the Son and Saviour ; you are therefore to have him as Son of God, and to believe in him, and to love him as God loves him. What doth God love him for ? What, only because he died for you ? No ; he loves him above all, because he is his Son. Now you are to have the image of God s heart in your hearts ; you must have an heart after God s heart toward the Lord Jesus. You love him because you come to him to be saved by him ; but if you love him as God doth, you must come to him as the Son, and love him as the Son, the glory of whose person is infinite. This is the record God gives of him, that you must not only look at Christ as an ordinance to save you, but as VOL. VITT. T
162 OF THE OBJECT AND ACTS* [BOOK II.
the Son. I do not say all this is done for a poor soul at first conversion,
but this is the record God teaches you and will bring you to, viz., not only
to seek his redemption, but to have his Son, and to have your hearts
flaming in love after his Son.
Secondly, I come now to shew how God doth teach these things con
cerning his Son. Will you know how the Father teacheth, and when it is
his teaching ? His teaching is not to teach you the doctrinals of salvation
and of the Son, for he leaves that to ministers and to the Bible, to
teach you the doctrinals only in a doctrinal way. But God the Father s
teaching,
1. Is to bring the knowledge you have of Christ home to your souls, to
say to your souls, Ps. xxxv. 3; to speak to your hearts, Hosea ii. 14.
They all heard Christ s sermons, but those come to me, says he, that
have heard and learned of the Father, John vi. 45. The Father doth not
speak to us of his Son vocally, as I told you he spake of his Son to Adam
(the giving of the ten commandments was by the ministration of angels), but he teacheth your hearts. What is the meaning of that ? Among all
the notions which you have of Christ as the object of faith, if there is but
one notion of Christ set home upon the soul (I call it an intuitive beam of
light of the knowledge of Christ), that is the notion the Father teaches ; and all the knowledge thou hast otherwise is not the teaching of the
Father, nor will save thee. No ; it is what he teaches thy soul, what he
opens thy heart to receive, that is saving. If you would go to Christ with
all the knowledge that notionally you have, and spread it before him, and woo him, it would not take effect ; but if thou feel such a light brought
into thy soul concerning Christ that comes to thy heart, go to Jesus Christ
with that one notion, and he knows his Father s voice in thy heart, and he
accepts thee, and listens to thee. When a man comes to die that hath a
great deal of knowledge, it is one little promise, one beam of light that
comforts him, and he hath that instruction sealed to him: Isa. 1. 4, He
wakeneth morning by morning; he wakeneth my ear to hear as the learned.
It is a prophecy how God the Father taught Jesus Christ ; he did not know
everything at once, but morning by morning he knew something still of
himself. Thus the Father comes and awakens thine ear, and causeth thy
soul to be attentive, and brings home something to thy soul ; thou mayest read the Bible all the day afterward, and not understand so much as to
have it brought thus home, and thy heart awakened.
2. A second thing he teacheth : he doth take thy heart with what he
saith thus to thee, by an intuitive beam. I compare this to the beams of
the sun in a burning glass; as they burn the thing they fall upon, so this beam from God takes and inflames the heart. The poor disciples (Luke
xxiv. 32) talked with Christ, and knew not that it was Christ, till he
opened their understandings, ver. 45, and then (say they) Did not our
hearts burn within us ? &c. There is an inflammation of the spirit, a taking
of the heart, that accompanieth such teachings as the Father teacheth. A
father s teaching imports affection, which doth draw : 1 Cor. viii. 3, If
any man love God, the same is known of him ; i.e., is made to know God (so Beza and Austin read it), whom God hath made to know ; so that still when God teacheth, there goeth affection with it. As there he speaks of love, I
speak of believing ; when the Father comes and teacheth, and brings in the
light of Christ, then the affections, the will, the whole heart follow, there
is longing, thirsting, eager desires.
3. The manner of his teaching is expressed, Eph. iv. 20, 21, If so be
ClIAP. V.] OF JUSTIFYING FAITH. 1(J3
that ye have heard him, and have been taught by him, as the truth is in Jesus. He speaks of such a teaching as all Christians have, for he speaks it of such a teaching as makes them holy. It is spoken of Christ himself, of Christ properly, therefore he saith, as the truth is in Jesus. The words are a plain distinction of a double knowledge. There is a know ledge which is not as the truth is in Jesus ; but if you have been taught the truth as it is in Jesus, that is the Father s teaching, and that is his Son s teaching. Truly, if the gospel of John had been written before Paul writ this epistle, I would have said Paul had alluded to those words of John, for he hath all three words, heard, read, learned of the Father.
But you will say, is it a false knowledge which carnal men have of Christ, who are not taught of the Father ? Truly, I say, it is not a true know
ledge, it is false in regard it is not as the truth is in Jesus ; it is not a fantas tical knowledge, but it is a phantasinatical knowledge. Now what is it to be taught Christ as the truth is in Jesus ? It is a real knowledge
: 1 John v. 20, He hath given us an understanding to know him that is true : he speaks ^it of the Father, but it follows of Christ too, to know the true Christ. There is a parhelion of Christ, you call it a false sun, but the true sun always outshines it, and the other is but a shadow ; but this is to know Jesus Christ in the substance of himself. If you see the picture of a man, it is a knowing the man, but it is not a knowing the true man indeed whose person it represents. As God the Father did beget his own Son from eter
nity, so he begets that real idea of the Lord Jesus Christ in a poor believer, that never entered into the heart of any other man : so that the believer can say, I have been with Christ to-day, as one said, Jesus Christ and I have been together this day ; I saw him this morning. He who sees the Son, ^and believes on him, hath life, John vi. 40 ; it is a real, solid, sub stantial sight, so that we have an understanding given anew to know the true Christ. It is not the phantasma, but it is something let in from the person himself, that begets that idea that is taken from the person himself. Though it is hard to express it, yet our ordinary comparison illustrates it. When a man is asleep, we call them phantasms which in a dream repre sent images of fathers and mothers, and persons that are dead ; but if you see the person himself, you say, Man, I am sure that this is he ; this is not a dream; as the poor blind man said, Behold, I see ; therefore this is put in by Christ and his apostles themselves,
* We know assuredly thou art the Son of God, and that thou earnest from God. Thus the Father s teaching shews you the true Christ, whom the apostles have seen, heard, and felt, 1 John i. 1, 2. When Christ rose again, said he to his disciples, Feel, here is flesh and bones, a spirit hath them not ; a spectrum hath them not. When Christ is represented to the soul by the Father, the soul is not deceived, though it hath not assurance personal of its own interest : his presence is real, and it is called the real presence of the Lord Jesus ; and this is to teach the truth as the truth is in Jesus.
4. It is so to teach you, as to persuade you that all you know of him is for his glory, that all tends to the glorifying of him. Look what particu lars the Father teacheth you concerning Christ, there goes along with and accompanies that light, that which tends to glorify the Son ; and if you cannot believe that he is yours, there will be secret veins and strains of holy affections accompanying your glorifying him in your hearts : 2 Thes.
* That the name of our Lord Jesus Christ may be glorified in you, and
i. 12,
ye^in him, according to the grace of our God, and the Lord Jesus Christ. Therefore, if the Father teach you any thing about his Son, his
164 OF THE OBJECT AND ACTS [BOOK II.
person, sufferings, justification, or the like, there is something in the heart doth rise up to the glorifying this Jesus : 2 Cor. iii. 18, We behold the glory of the Lord, which is meant of Christ. Thus when Thomas would not believe, John xx., our Saviour, as a means to make him believe, shews him his hands and his feet ; his heart falls down, though his knees did not, and he cries out,
* My Lord, and my God. You read in the
evangelists of many that received cure from him, came to him and wor
shipped him with their bodies and souls too, as it is commanded, Ps.
xlv. 11, He is thy Lord, worship thou him, says the Father to his church.
Oh, when there comes in but a beam of the excellency of Christ s person, that makes the believer to glorify him : Oh how precious is this Lord Jesus ! And the soul doth sanctify him in his heart, in his will and affections, and the soul comes to him for his blood, and the Father hath taught it so to do.
Oh how precious is that blood, saith the poor soul, if I might have a part in it, that can make sinners righteous, that can bring in everlasting right eousness, that sin shall never undo me, that can justify all my sins in a moment ! Perhaps the soul cannot say, I have a portion in it, but yet it can say, I come to him to have it so, 1 Pet. ii. 7. No cordial so precious as this blood of Christ to justify the soul ; and though the soul cannot say, I have part in this righteousness, yet it doth say, if I had all the righteous ness of men and angels, I would account it dog s-meat, fling it away that I
might have his righteousness. The soul falls down aghast at this righteous ness in an admiration, Oh how glorious is this righteousness
! So that
although the soul knows not its interest in it, but remains in doubts, yet
it hath the highest value of it, and stands adoring, as John did, when he
said, Behold the Lamb of God, that taketh away the sins of the world, John i. 29. In seeing this Jesus that hath sufficiency to take away sin, the soul stands aghast, and worships him ; and though it doth not fall down on its knees, yet adores him in its heart. These are the teachings of the
Father, which have such effects, and thus you have seen how he teacheth. He brings home the light of the knowledge of God and Jesus Christ to the
soul, he induceth a special light, he wakens the soul morning by morning, affects the heart, takes the soul, represents all in the truth, in the reality, as the truth is in Jesus, and teacheth the soul so to know Christ, as to
give glory to him. For when Christ is represented as he is a Jesus, there is a glory that accompanies that representation, a glory which so
raiseth the soul above itself, that it stands amazed at him, and falls down
before him, and glorifies him.